In addition to reduced elasticity, Dr. Liotta says menopausal hormone shifts can also cause the skin to thin, cartilage to soften and facial bones to deteriorate. “Collagen loss causes the brows to drop, and the upper and lower eyelids to become looser and more wrinkled. The decrease in elasticity can also enable fat beneath the eyes to puff forward, accentuating eye bags. And the loss of facial bone allows soft tissue to fall, leading to jowls, deepening of the nasolabial folds, and a less defined jawline,” she explains.
To address these changes, Dr. Liotta says women often opt for procedures like blepharoplasties to tighten loose lids, chin implants to address bone loss in the jaw and pull the skin there tauter, and even rhinoplasties (nose jobs) and earlobe lifts to combat the cartilage loss that can leave once-well-shaped noses or earlobes droopy.
“You’ve likely heard people say your nose and your ears continue to grow with age. But that’s not really true. What’s happening is a combination of the skin thinning and growing looser—and the cartilage that used to give your nose or ears angularity and refinement suddenly softening and spreading. The result is a droopy earlobe or a nose that flattens and widens when you smile,” says Dr. Liotta, who’s coined this procedure a “nose lift or a nasal rejuvenation rhinoplasty” and says it’s becoming one of her most popular surgeries. “I did this kind of rhinoplasty on three menopausal women this week and I have two more next week.”
In her Beverly Hills office, Kimberly Lee, MD, a board-certified facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon, says she’s also seeing a number of “women in their 40s and 50s seeking eyelid surgery…but these patients are seeking natural results, where others may not know that they’ve had something done. They aren’t looking for results that have no wrinkles, just fewer wrinkles.”
Dr. Liotta adds: “I like to refer to these menopause makeover procedures as ‘moving the furniture around, rather than knocking down the walls.’”
That’s not to say some women in their forties and fifties don’t ever get facelifts. But, generally, these younger patients are undergoing a (somewhat-euphemistically coined) ‘minilift,’ or ‘babylift.’ “These terms are a bit of a misnomer because a facelift is still a facelift, even if you’re not removing as much skin as you would on a 65-year-old, or you’re primarily pulling just the lower face taut. But on younger patients this does tend to be a smaller operation so, I guess, in that sense it is ‘mini,” says Dr. Liotta.
